past events & lectures

“Works in Progress” Seminar Series

Trauma and the Opacity of the Narrating “I” in the Holocaust Video Testimony of Bessie K.

Wednesday, May 6, 2015
8:00 PM

"Trauma and the Opacity of the Narrating “I” in the Holocaust Video Testimony of Bessie K." with Johanna Bodenstab, Ph.D.

In this video testimony, the “bundle” Bessie K. refers to is her baby boy, who was taken away from her during a selection. This presentation will trace both her active struggle to form a narrative as well as the way in which her trauma unconsciously shapes her narrative. The disparity between the survivor’s narrating “I” and her remembered self forms a narrative structure capable of representing the traumatic aspects of the selection experience, even though the trauma of the very experience cannot be expressed explicitly.

A second approach to an understanding of this trauma narrative is via the transferential dynamics stirred in the recipient. By paying close attention to her emotional responses, the recipient of the testimony is registering unconsciously transmitted content of the video testimony, which can be understood as manifestations of non-symbolized aspects of traumatic experience. Ultimately a biographical and historical contextualization are offered, which create context and connections the traumatized survivor herself cannot make.

Johanna Bodenstab is a writer and translator. She is a graduate of the “Psychoanalysis for Scholars” program at the Western New England Psychoanalytic Society (New Haven, CT). She holds a PhD in Psychoanalysis from Kassel Universität (Germany) for her work with video testimonies of survivors, focusing on mother-daughter-relationships during the Holocaust.

Educational Objectives: After attending, participants will be able to:
1) describe the nature of trauma transmission
2) recognize the transferential aspects of interviewing victims of trauma
3) identify aspects of non-symbolized experience.